Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon speaks with Sen. Dick Durbin about the prospects for gun control legislation. The Illinois Democrat chaired a Senate hearing on the issue of gun violence, but the congressional debate remains contentious.

Syria's war has thrown ordinary citizens into situations they never could have imagined and changed them in ways they never would have dreamed. It's turned carpenters, engineers and doctors into armed rebels. And in Aleppo, it has turned a young woman teacher into a war photographer.